


Tousled

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Developing Relationship, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 16:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13299048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: It's an odd thing to fixate on, he knows, but Noctis can't help it. Ignis has always worn his hair the same way, no matter how much else changed. (In which, Iggy's hairstyle forces Noctis to realize he's been looking at him a lot differently than he used to.)





	Tousled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aithilin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/gifts).



> happy birthday, fluff queen! have a little bit of ignoct, featuring iggy's floofy hair for extra softness

He liked Ignis’s hair, just the way it was.

It was plain, nondescript; just how they liked it in the Crownsguard. But it was never nearly as severe as Cor’s close-cropped hair or Monica’s sharp bob or Dustin’s receding veneer. It was soft and perfectly tousled, no matter how hard he tried to tame it beneath the teeth of his comb. It fell in his eyes, and he could never decide if it was better to let it fall in front of or behind his glasses. He was always taking them off and adjusting his bangs in the nearest reflective surface when he thought no one was looking.

Noctis liked it. Sleek, caramel tresses topping a smooth style of casual decorum. It was a little touch of wild to crown his otherwise bridled appearance, forcibly reining in the last strands of adolescent savagery. Not that he’d ever been nearly as unruly of a teenager as Noctis might have liked to try antagonizing him into being.

They’d had their moments, Ignis always just on the cusp of tasting the rebellion that Noctis craved for the both of them. Noctis would often shanghai him into little escapes beyond the Citadel or make him complicit in harmless pranks around the towering palace. As much as Ignis tried to dissuade him or guilt him or bring him to heel, he was still _there._ He still came along when he didn’t have to. He still took the blame when everyone knew damn well that the Prince was the true troublemaker. And he still had to fight the corners of his lips from turning up into a smile every single time.

His hair reminded Noctis of more innocent times. It had always stayed the same, even when everything else was changing. Even after they’d both grown taller and older and Ignis grew wiser and Noctis grew only more confused and uncertain of who he was if he wasn’t his crown, the simplicity of something as superficial as his friend’s hairstyle was his last link to a time that made sense. A time where he could still remember smiling as he coaxed out the caught twigs in Iggy’s hair from the bushes they crawled through on their escapes together. It reminded him of when they were just themselves. Just Noct and Iggy, not prince and adviser.

So, when he changed it – when he swept it up and out of his eyes in a severe spike more Crownsguard than casual – it was like watching his Iggy die. One day, just out of the blue, as quick as the car crash that stole away his own innocence, the last thread he’d been holding onto for happier times was gone.

“You changed your hair.”

Ignis looked at Noctis as if he were ill, concern creasing along his brow. He must have sounded as sad as he felt about the change. Noctis faked a smile. Ignis’s expression did not look any less convinced that Noctis had contracted some sort of terrible virus.

“It’s, um… cool,” Noct lied. “Different,” he added, more truthfully.

Ignis scrutinized him for another long, wary moment before glancing at his reflection in the window. “That it is,” he agreed. “I felt it to be more practical, if not at least more fashionable.”

Noctis swallowed around a hard lump in his throat and kept on smiling. “Looks good, Specs.”

What else was he supposed to say? Order him to change it back just because _he_ didn’t like it? Pretend like the Prince was the only one who was allowed to have any license over his chamberlain’s appearance? Take that whole “your body is sworn to the Crown”-thing a little too literally? That would imply there was something implicitly wrong about the hairstyle – as if anyone could ever criticize Ignis’s looks.

Noctis couldn’t even coerce with some kind cajoling that the new look didn’t work for him because it totally _did._ Ignis could make anything look good. While he was modest about his appearance, Noctis had a feeling that Ignis knew damn well how good he looked. He took pride in himself and he had his own style. He always looked trendy, yet authentic to himself – never a catalogue copy-cat, never trying too hard to be someone he was not, never another face in the crowd.

He was a subtle stand-out, the type of person that blended into the background until he chose to command the room – and command he could, far more adept at charming just the right amount of attention when it was needed of him than any king before him. There was an understated fierceness to his voice when he needed to get a point across, the placement of every vowel and consonant, the structure of every sentence as nuanced as a blade form.

Noctis envied him and admired him, and perhaps, as he got older, he even loved him for all of it.

That particular development in Noctis’s on-going struggle with how he felt about Ignis’s appearance came to a head over… well, his head. Always with the hair.

_Damnit._

He didn’t know what it was that did it, exactly. Perhaps it stemmed from the absence of his old, dowdy hair that Noctis had been pretending he didn’t miss seeing so much. Perhaps it was a lifetime of burgeoning feelings finally compounding onto one, innocuous moment. He didn’t pretend to understand why things happened the way they did, why his brain had to go making things more complicated than they needed to be, why he had to change things worse than they were already changing. He just felt mortified and more confused and a shameful little hum of excitement about the whole thing afterwards.

“Were you able to understand that mining report from the Cartanica region I left with you last night?” Ignis asked over the patter of the showerhead.

“Yup. Sure. No problems.” Noctis rapped furiously at his phone’s screen, driving up the hit count for his “King’s Knight” character as quickly as his thumbs were capable.

It was just a regular day. Just another cooldown in the Crownsguard’s locker room after training. Just another couple of minutes of letting his hair dry and waiting for Ignis to wash off before heading up to the Citadel for a quick study of whatever brief conference he was scheduled to sit in on for the evening. It was just another ordinary, unimportant moment of transit between two functions he’d always been expected to perform – and he liked to think he was getting pretty good at, too.

“What is the foremost mineral produced from the area, then?” Ignis called from the showers.

Noct’s brow furrowed with concentration as the boss attempted to interrupt his consecutive streak, deftly timing his dodges to resume his hits before the number reset. “Um… it was blackstone crystal.”

“Redstone crystal,” Ignis corrected. “You’re thinking of the Balouve Mines out in Leide.”

The backs of Noct’s teeth clamped down in frustration, frantically rolling clear of the fireball volley tracking him across the arena. _Black as Balouve_ , _carnelian Cartanica,_ he should have remembered that, they had tricks for remembering that. And he should not be taking this long to get his hits back in. His numbers were starting to slip.

“It’s not the end of the world,” Ignis assured him, the drum of the shower hissing down to a trickle as he finished up. “The likelihood of you having to know the specifics of mineral mining for anything important is fairly slim. It only serves to impress the people in charge.”

“Isn’t that all that qualifies as ‘anything important?’”

Noctis leaned forward on the bench, drawing the screen closer to his face as he tried to regain his rhythm and keep up the hits. He was so close to the high score, he always got to this point before he slipped up. He never could keep up with the final form. His heart started racing with the eagerness to finish the boss with the high score he’d been trying so hard to achieve and it always tripped him up. He could never be patient enough to dodge clear of the AoE enough to preserve the hit count. He always came away a few hits short of what he wanted. He cursed under his breath and batted at his knee as the victory screen came up and tallied the score from the fight.

“Trying to steal my high score in exchange for getting you through this meeting? Tsk, tsk, Noctis.”

He hadn’t even heard Ignis stop talking while he’d tried to accomplish his goal. The proximity of his voice caught him a little bit by surprise, but didn’t desist the annoyance of his glare when he threw it over his shoulder at him. The only thing that could stall his barbed response in its tracks was Iggy’s hair.

It was back. Just for a moment, it was damp and tousled by his towel, in the same, smooth disarray he’d always loved about it – and there was that thought again: _loved_. That was the only thing different about it all. That one word, defining how he felt about such a simple, stupid thing.

There was nothing else different. They’d seen each other out of the shower plenty of times before. They lived together. They pelted towels across the apartment when they were in a hurry, shared a mirror half in-and-out of shirts before the big galas that never failed to tie Noctis in knots (and while Ignis was far better at pretending the spotlight didn’t bother him, he went through just as many different outfits for himself as Noctis panicked over on those nights, as well). Noctis had seen his hair wet and mussed, seen him without his glasses, seen the gilded sheen of his skin dewy with water before.

But you never really did appreciate something until it was gone, he supposed.

Ignis looked concerned again. Ignis did that thing where his brow dimpled and his lips drew a low line across his face and the skin around his eyes softened while the color within them sharpened to attention. It was easier to see his Iggy in the stare. Sometimes, Noctis wasn’t sure who was really looking out for him: his friend or his advisor. It felt a lot like the latter, lately, with his hair pressing up and out all the tenderness of his youth. But like this, during these simple, in-between moments that Noctis had never thought to cherish before now, he looked more like his Iggy… _his._

“Maybe you’ll teach me the strategy as a reward for getting through tonight,” Noctis hurried to say, averting his eyes before his face could betray any more of what he was thinking.

Ignis was patient enough not to press him about the faulted way Noctis looked at him. He proceeded to the locker beside him, where a change of clothes hung neatly inside for him to retrieve into the changing room. Noctis tried very hard not to follow every little movement. And he especially bit down hard on a request for him to leave his hair as it was.

“I suppose I could,” Ignis said. “But I don’t know if I’d be able to part with that particular achievement even for you, Noct.”

He smiled as he walked away, all affectionate mischief and making Noctis’s chest ache. He stared down at the darkened screen of his phone while he listened to the door for the changing stall swing shut and the rustle of clothes shifting within.

This was different. He couldn’t place _why_ it was different, but it wasn’t the same breed of pining he’d been doing as of late over his own symbolic perceptions of Ignis’s hair. This lump in his throat was a little harder, his heartbeat uncharacteristically faster. Not a fan.

Ignis was talking again. More summaries of what to expect from the meeting, some reminders of what Noctis was expected to know. When he exited the changing stall, he was as crisp and refined in Crownsguard black as he ever was. Before he gathered up the tools for torturing his hair up into uniform spikes, before _Iggy_ smoothed himself into _Ignis_ , Noctis braved the little idea in his head.

“Hey, Specs? Want to go out after this? For food or something? Haven’t really done that in a while, the two of us.”

Ignis didn’t even pause. “Certainly, Noct. And since it was your idea, I’ll let you choose the venue without argument. I promise.”

Noctis smiled, lingering on the relaxed fall of Iggy’s hair over his eyes. It was so much simpler to talk to him like that. Noctis knew that it was foolish to rely on something so vain to embolden him into such a request. And he knew that he was setting himself up for some kind of disappointment. He wasn’t sure if he’d just asked Ignis out on a date or not, but whatever it was, he didn’t think Ignis was thinking nearly as deeply into it as he was. And he certainly wasn’t thinking about how important his hair was to either of them.

Noctis was distracted throughout most of the meeting, fretting over what exactly he’d just initiated, if anything at all. To his credit – or, more likely, Ignis’s, with his deft maneuvering – he didn’t botch the whole conference and embarrass the Crown by making an idiot of himself, thank the Six. But he still felt like a fool as he stole glances at Ignis across the dinner table when they settled down away from the Citadel, much later.

“Noct, are you certain that you’re alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, Specs,” he lied some more. “Just needed a little bit of normal, I guess.”

Ignis considered the answer, no doubt plotting out time in his schedule to fit in more “normal.” Normal wasn’t really what he wanted though.

It rained on the way home with very little warning before it. Neither of them were prepared, hop-scotching beneath restaurant awnings and gutters and whatever overhangs they could find on their way back to the car. There wasn’t a dry spot in the city by the time they reached it. Not a dry person, either. The car filled with the smell of rain as they piled into the front seats. Their clothes were plastered to their bodies, hair matted to their foreheads, and Ignis’s glasses were dappled with raindrops.

“Well, that was rather sudden,” Ignis huffed, trying to find a dry patch on his person to clear his glasses.

“Not a big fan of spontaneity, Specs?”

“Not even remotely.”

Ignis turned on the heat in an effort to dry them off and proceeded to struggle with his glasses. Not that he needed them to see his reflection in the rearview mirror. The corner of his mouth twitched in annoyance at the bedraggled state of his hair from the sudden downpour, fiddling with the stringy strands as best he could for the sake of some sort of order.

Noctis liked it that way. And he liked spontaneity.

He liked a lot of things that Ignis didn’t particularly care for, half of those things relating to Ignis himself. He liked Ignis. Always had. Lately, he just liked him a little more than he should. He liked the ease of his presence, how simple it was to tease with him, how he always knew how to look after him when even Noctis was at a loss. He liked when it was just the two of them. When they were each at their barest, most vulnerable versions of themselves, where no one else could see.

He liked his hair like that because it was soft like he knew Ignis really was. It was imperfect and simple and didn’t pretend to be anything more.

Noctis wanted to stop pretending, too. Just for a moment. He felt brave enough to do it when they were like this. Brave enough to lean across the console and kiss the downturned edge of Iggy’s mouth to turn it soft again.

Ignis stilled, a hand in his disheveled hair and eyes on Noct’s reflection in the rearview. Noctis held his breath, watching the profile of his face. Strong lines of noble bearing, sculpting sun-kissed skin as fine as marble, delicately veined with raindrops in the stillness.

“I thought you wanted a strategy as your reward for the night,” Ignis said at last, carefully turning to face him.

Noctis remained close, enough that their lips just barely grazed when Ignis was done moving. His eyes were as pale as the rainy weather beating against the windshield. And they were curious instead of appalled by the gesture, a fear Noctis thought he might have always nurtured, but never truly realized he’d had until now. He hadn’t realized a lot of things until now.

“No reward,” he said with a minute shake of his head, not wanting to break the nearness. “Just because.”

Ignis hummed in thought, watching Noctis just as intently as he was watching him. He was thinking of a hundred different things, probably. Whatever they were, they simplified and solidified into one thought.

Ignis reached up to take his chin between thumb and forefinger and tilted Noct’s face up to kiss him back. A full kiss, aimed with method and intent, not a mere accident like Noctis could write his off as if the advance was unwanted.

Damn, Ignis knew how to kiss. It was deeper than Noctis thought he might make it. Surer than even he felt. Warm and damp with rain. Noctis let his hands venture into his hair to keep him close, letting the darkened brown strands slip like ink through his fingers. It was just them again. Just Noct and Iggy. He had his Specs all to himself.

Maybe that was a thought too selfish to have any presence in a prince’s mind, but he left the crown at the Citadel that night. He didn’t really care if it was selfish or not. He just wanted something small and simple and soft, just between the two of them. He just wanted to feel Iggy’s hair slide beneath his fingers and remember that, in spite of everything changing, some things stayed the same.

He was braver when Iggy’s hair was down. Weeks later, when they were both braver, after many stolen kisses and secreted away dates that could easily have not been dates for how casual they were about it, Noctis could make his hair however he wanted it against the pillows. It looked better like that. And after a few months, Ignis finally started agreeing with him. He left it down more often around the house. Just for the two of them.


End file.
